SPLIT
LEVEL
Google describes this place as “an airy, split-level cafe”. Accurate — and a considerable understatement.
Downstairs is the loud half
A hand-drawn mural runs the length of one wall. Teal banquettes, tables that get pushed together without anyone asking permission, and a red wall that turns up in roughly every third photograph of this place.
There is also a foosball table, which nobody here appears embarrassed about.
Upstairs is where you stay
Half a flight up, the ceiling opens into a skylight and the room drops about ten decibels. Marble tables, wire chairs, windows on two sides. This is where the laptops go, and where the books get read.
There is a balcony too, looking over the tree line on 5th Main. It is the first thing to fill on a Bengaluru December morning.
THE BOOKS ARE NOT DECOR
The tagline on the door reads Good Food. Great Reads. The shelf is a working shelf — take one down, read it at the table, put it back. Or don’t, and let it turn up in somebody’s photograph six months later.
Exhibit A through D
Look through enough reviews and a pattern appears: the books keep photobombing the food, and nobody has ever asked them to stop.
Somebody here names the dishes, and should never be stopped
Everything else
Scroll — moves sideways
